


Setting the Universe to Rights

by Bodhicitta



Series: A Halloween Miracle [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Awesome Molly Hooper, F/M, Female Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper Appreciation, Molly Hooper Experiences Life as Sherlock, Molly Hooper and Sherlock Swap Transport, Sherlock Experiences Life as a Female, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock is Not a Virgin, Sherlock is a Brat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:26:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodhicitta/pseuds/Bodhicitta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ending of my previous story "A Halloween Miracle." (I know, it's a crap title).  Do not read this "addendum" if you would prefer to read the "long version" of that story, which will eventually lead back here.</p><p>UPDATE - I changed the title.  Sorry!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spooky Action at a Distance

_Parties_. A complete waste of time, particularly those in "celebration" of All Hallow's Eve.  Yet, not entirely.  He had begun to see the anthropological value of observing humans in various states of inebriation.  

One human in particular.  She was wobbling on spike heels, some sort of weird shoes with zippers up the back of the heel.  Her hair was full of product that made it look as if she had just woken up after a night spent on a beach, or in a garbage dumpster.  Why had she gone to so much care to look like...oh.  Her costume was...a tramp?  A gutter snipe?  A common whore?  Well played, Miss Hooper.  That is very funny indeed.

Molly.  He wondered what it must be like to be her.  But it was more than wondering.  Every part of his body ached to know her from the inside out. 

He found her curled up in a corner of the hosts' bedroom, flipping through a medical journal. Every single man at the party had stalked her with their eyes, all night long, and of course she had not taken any notice.  In fact, she assumed their stares were disapproval. Too much makeup?  Not enough stuffing in her bra?  She never guessed at the fact that her hair smelled heavenly and her voice struck deep vibrations in Lestrade's innermost being, and the host, although married, had spent much of the party in a reverie about divorcing his wife and asking Molly out for coffee.  And John just thought she was the cat's meow.  Something between a little sister and a cherished colleague.  And still she secreted herself away, assuming she was too nerdy, too unfashionable, her face too prematurely lined with hard work and self-sufficiency to attract any meaningful male attention.

Sherlock entered her hideaway slowly so as not to spook her.  Her shoes had been discarded near the door, and he picked one up to inspect it further.

"Why do your shoes have zippers on them?"

"I was being a stripper.  Or..something..."

She kept pretending to read her journal.   _I know my costume wasn't very good._

"Yes, it was," Sherlock rebutted.

She tilted her little face up at him, and her eyes flashed wide.  

"I didn't say that out loud."

Sherlock walked unsteadily over to her corner of the room.  

"Why did you call my costume 'sad?'"

_Because you are so adorable, so ravishing, so tender...you could have come dressed in..._

"...sweatpants and a ripped t-shirt....It's sad you don't know how..."

_Lovely you are.  How much I..._

Molly stared at him with a purity he had never known.  Big brown orbs blurred into some sort of portal to a place where time and space ceased.  He fell into her, entirely all the way in. 

At some point, his head made its way into her lap.  How did that happen?  Why are her fingers in my hair? (Please, never take your fingers from my hair).... Her soft fingertips caressing my eyelids.  Is this what it means to be happy?  Does she...?  Could she actually...?

Sherlock closed his eyes.  Their lips met.  He was consumed with tenderness and longing.  Molly partially opened her mouth against his to say something - a wish, a request....

A prayer?

And that was the moment it happened.  They both fervently, deeply, and passionately yearned to experience life from inside the other person's body, to see through her eyes (his eyes), to know her aches (his pains)...and at the exact same moment.   Not just at a similar time - at the precise moment.  Not merely _within_ milliseconds - at the _very_ millisecond, a precise alignment of intention on the nanoparticle level.  If intention is a thought, if a thought is a neurochemical, if a chemical is merely a collection of molecules, quanta, bosons, quarks (any smaller than that and the boundary between physics and the Divine dissolves).....

Something passed between them.  Something aligned.  Einstein would have called it "spooky action at a distance."  You move, I move. You hurt, I hurt.  You want, I want. The room faded away.

They both pulled back to look at one another.  A deep calm resided in the space between their bodies.  

And neither of them knew what had transpired, or that this was just the beginning of many things that would pass between them.

 

***

"Or at least, I think that's what happened," Sherlock finished, gripping the large, marble-likehands now animated by the soul of Molly Hooper.  

"Maybe, Sherlock," she assented.  Was he saying he had fallen in love with her?  If so, she did not need to hear the words. His actions, leaping unbidden into her body, pushing her to the cold side of the bed so to speak, taking all the blankets for himself - like an old married couple - this would suffice as proof.  More than suffice.  

"Well, you know there is only one way to reverse this."  Sherlock reached into his new purse - something blue and boxy and impractical with no shoulder strap and no interior pockets (he was spending all of her money on accessories).  He pulled out a notepad.

"Soul reversal.  How shall we proceed.  Miss Hooper?"

"A blood transfusion?" she ventured.

"No. Not a blood transfusion, Molly."

She pursed her lips, luscious, unreasonably plush lips over which, she had to admit, she would miss having ownership.  To lick whenever she liked....

"A full on brain transplant?"

"Oh, Molly, don't be coy."  Sherlock reached up and brushed a stray, lush, glossy dark brown lock off of the forehead that used to be his own.  "You know we are going to have to have sex."

Molly's eyes grew wide, as the being who looked disturbingly like herself encroached on her personal space, seated himself (herself?) on her lap.  She was holding her own self in her lap, but the steeled desire and rock hard intention was all Sherlock. He was practically climbing all over her, using petite hands to wantonly explore the body Molly inhabited.

"It can't be perfunctory, you know - the sex.  The gods will know," he whispered ominously, casting a look around the room at the invisible deities, aloof, impassive, standing off to the side, observing, judging, casting lots over their fate....

"It has to be sex like we mean it."  He made a crude gesture more befitting a teenaged boy, pumping his finger (her slender, fairy-like finger) through a hole created by his other hand and popped his eyebrows up and down quickly.   _Bow chicka bow wow._

"It's going to have to be, like, totally pornographic," he continued. "I'm thinking chocolate will be involved, and Nutella...dental dams, will we really need those?" he pondered, stabbing his notepad with a pencil that had materialized out of his hair.  He crossed something off a list that had already been extensively edited and re-edited.  "Probs not.  Lubricant, definitely lubricant, maybe strawberry-flavored..."

"I....I can't do that, Sherlock."

"It's still so weird hearing my name come out of my own mouth," he murmured, closing the distance between them even further, inclining his delicate, doll-like head upwards.

"I can't...."  Molly stammered.  

"I rather think you can," glancing down at the hardening bulge in between Molly's legs.

"I can't...have sex with myself!"  She grimaced, her face contorted in disgust.  "And I can't, insert, myself into another person...much less my own...self!"  She hid her face in her hands.  "I can't do that."

Molly began to sob, big, deep, masculine sobs, almost like barks.

"Well, of course not!” Sherlock chirped.  "We'll have to get drunk first!  I should have thought that would be rather obvious!"  


	2. Unforgiveable

And so they had sex.  And lots of of it.  And many varieties.  Makeup sex, phone sex, morning sex, sleepy sex, carnal sex, passionate sex.  

Perfunctory sex.  Sherlock's favorite kind.  

_How can this be your favorite kind, Sherlock?_

_I just like the idea of taking you for no particular reason, just because you're there.  Well, here.  Underneath me.  Whenever I want.  Whenever my, oh...my gaze falls upon you._

_Doing dishes...I was doing the dishes!  Which you were supposed to do, by the way.  How is that sexy?_

_Yes...aah....dishes or....folding, oh goddamn it...laundry....oh, fuck it all to hell, I can't hold back!_

He spilled and spilled inside her grimacing as if in pain.  He finally collapsed on top of her, just barely holding his full weight off of her, gasping for air.

"Honestly, Sherlock," Molly scolded, stroking his round bottom, the soft cleft in between his buttocks, "you're like a 14 year old boy!"

And there was pro-creative sex.

First sex after childbirth.

Post-divorce sex

Hate sex.

Second honeymoon sex.

And the cycle began anew.  

_This time no funny business.  No switching, no swapping without my permission or even with my permission, Sherlock!_

_That was an honest mistake!  I was just so overwhelmed with emotion, and you know that's not my strong suit!  Things happen!  People get shot, bodies get swapped..._

_But my first child!  I didn't get to experience the birth of my first child!_

_I swear, I'll make it up to you._

Pro-creative sex (much more of that).  Empty nest sex.

Post-chemotherapy sex.

The only truly Unforgivable Incident - the one she could never ever forgive - happened one cold winter day, so cold one's breath turned to frost right away.

She woke up as usual, but it was the first day she was not supposed to have woken up, if all had been proceeding normally in the universe.

The day she was not supposed to have woken up, she opened her eyes and, fully expecting to feel tremendous, soul-destroying pain, she groaned.  A masculine groan.  

_No.  Not again, Sherlock.  Not this time._

She staggered out of bed - corralling these old man's bones into some semblance of grace.

In the mirror, a pair of beautiful blue green eyes, a shock of salt and pepper hair that had not thinned at all, though time had carved deep, lovely caverns in the hollows of his cheeks.

 _No, Sherlock,_  she thought, touching the stubble on his set jaw, and caressing the lips that she adored, that only she was permitted to kiss.   _You should not have done it._

He had finally solved it.  How to make the leap on purpose, consciously.  To will it into existence with the sheer force of his intellect.  He had connected with something below the surface of things, had located the deeper reality.

She would have to go to her own funeral, the one she had planned even as Sherlock refused to acknowledge her impending death.  Hear the songs she had chosen.  See her own transport lifted into the ground.  Without him there, as he should have been, to hear the lovely things she had written about their lives together.  Thoroughly, devastatingly alone in that no one knew she was mourning her own husband and not the other way around.

Seeing her own adult children's faces transmogrified in a grief she had never wanted to witness.  She would almost rather be dead than see their faces twisted, melted almost, with grief.  It did her heart no good to know that she could cause so much suffering.  

And then the coffin was lowered in. She tried to restrain herself, but she could not.  

"Sherlock, no, Sherlock!  Please, God, no!!  Don't do it!  Don't do it," she moaned.  "I love you, I love you...."  Her last wild exhalation of woe before she lost consciousness.

The mourners would be confused but understanding.  Their friend, colleague, and father, babbling his own name.  It was surely a sign of grief.  Dementia, possibly.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Day, after day, year after year Molly gazed into the mirror at the handsome elderly man staring back at her.  Some would have called him a "silver fox."  A shock of thick, glossy white hair.  Lean, sinewy, a body like a hot, ageless yoga instructor. Crystal blue eyes with shards of green.  Inappropriately young women winked at him, smiled crookedly, even brushed up against him.  She could have sworn more than one waitress and quite a few waiters made an undue fuss over her.

_Him._

It was comforting, lovely really, to still sort of be with him.  Every gesture, every movement reminding her of him.  She could look at his hands any time she wanted to.  Sometimes she pretended she was him.  It would be too easy to slip into a kind of senility in which she lost her sense of self and simply _...became_  him.  

Sitting on the bed, staring into the closet, trying to figure out what to wear to their youngest child's casual wedding.  Joanna was their "Oops Baby."  Well, their second oops. Third, if you counted Harry, who jumped in just after the divorce.

Molly would have liked to have worn a pretty yellow dress, maybe twist her hair into a messy bun, some pearls.   _Just some trousers and a jumper, Dad - nothing fancy._ A bit of lip gloss would have been nice, but she didn't need lipgloss - she needed to shave! And there was the odd unbidden erections.  Leave it to Sherlock to be entirely unplagued by erectile dysfunction. Molly was constantly being distracted by thoughts of sex. And she missed that unique pleasure in chocolate that only a woman can know - all cliches, all true.

But then she chided herself for being angry about living out life in a male body.  Had it not been for Sherlock's...choice, she wouldn't be doing anything right now, not choosing a shirt, not trying to find a pair of matching clean socks.  She would be dead.  And what does that even mean?  And where is he, my Sherlock, my darling?

At moments, the grief overwhelmed her.  And it wasn't a grief at merely having lost him, which would be profound enough, but somehow more in keep with the natural order of things.  It was compounded by the knowledge that he was the one who _should_ be alive; he should be walking Joanna down the aisle, pushing little Scott on the swingset, teaching Penelope how to play the violin.  Fly fishing with John Watson.  Keeping the beehives in order.  Feeling the warmth of the sun on his face.  

He had sacrificed those things for her.  

And in doing so, had undone all time and space and reason.  Had changed the order of things. The natural procession of life, disease, and death.  

Worse, she did not definitively know how "it" had occurred.  Was she deluding herself?  She assumed that  _he_  had done this for  _her_?  But was it just to make herself feel better that she assumed this?  Had she...perhaps she was the one who had made the leap, who had pushed him into the abyss and taken his place.  Terrified of death, had she unconsciously harnessed her profound connection to him, selfishly exploited his deep love for her....Somewhere in the place where there is no time or space, when she was comatose and he was grieving, had there been a meeting of their souls, and had she persuaded him to leave?  It would have been so easy.  

_Let me stay, Sherlock.  You know the children need their mother...._

He would have agreed.  Without hesitation.  Because he always underestimated the love we all bore for him.  

_Always._

It would have been easy to nudge him to the edge, to take the fall for her.  The possibility that she had stolen his remaining years was too awful to contemplate.

"Oh, my darling, I'm the one who should be dead."  Oh.  Was that out loud?  She heard footsteps just outside her door, backing away.  One of the kids or one of the teenaged grandkids....

And in this way, such thoughts consumed her days, slowed her movements, dulled her reactions.  One day, when she stepped out of the house to go to the grocery store, one of the grandkids was waiting by the car door.  

"It's okay, Grandpa, I'll drive you!"

And he did, or one of the kids, or a neighbor, every day after that.

Still, being able to see the grandchildren grow up was nice.  She tried to hold gratitude in her heart for what he had gifted her (for she knew deep down that if anyone were able to do this intentionally, it was him).  She tried to banish the ever present deep sadness and shame almost.  Sometimes, she felt an inkling of pride in him.   _My Sherlock._ His curiosity was unbounded, his intellect knew no limits....

"Yes, I'm quite sure he could do it."

"Do what, Pop-pop?"

***

She knew she should school herself to act more like him,  But she could not.  She bounced the grandkids on her knee and blew warm kisses into their naked bellies.  The children watched, with quiet amazement, and sometimes she thought they knew.

Right before walking Joanna down the aisle, she fished something out of her trouser pocket, a pearl necklace, and clasped it around the young bride's neck.  She didn't care that it was probably a mistake, didn't care when Joanna's eyes filled with tears and fear and confusion because that was a secret between her mother and herself - whispered into her mother's ear before she slipped into a coma...and she had never ever told her father.  

_"What do you want, my sweet girl?"_

_"I want to wear your mother's pearls at my wedding, just like you did.  That is all I really want."_

_"Oh, are you getting married today?_

_"Some day, Mom."_

_"I wish I could be there."_

Molly looked down at Joanna, and in Sherlock's deep, rich baritone, asked their daughter, "Oh, are you getting married today?"  Molly had to almost pull Joanna down the aisle to keep the young woman from falling out.  

Swimming through Molly and Sherlock's daughter's head, a mixture of fear, and happiness, and horror.  How could he know about the pearls.  I never told anyone except Mom.  He didn't even know where those pearls were.  As good a detective as her father was, there were some things even he _could not possibly have deduced._

At the end of the aisle stood John Watson, who since retirement from medicine had taken up the cloth (well, an online print-at-home certificate allowing him to perform weddings). The newly ordained minister of the church of "we'll talk about that later and does it matter, Sherlock?" cleared his throat and with pride spilling over asked, "Who gives this woman's hand in marriage?"

Joanna looked up at the face of her father, eyes wide and filled with wonder.

The tall, elegant elderly man with snow white hair, a twinkle in his eye and alabaster skin, crooked his mouth into a slight grin.

"Her _father_."

And Molly winked at Joanna, just before the bride fainted.

 


	4. Mycroft suspects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kudos! I try to not care about such trivialities, but in truth - I LOVE IT!
> 
> A note to anyone who might ever read anything I write - I edit CONSTANTLY. I do not know if this means that if you bookmark me, then every time I make an edit you receive an e-mail update. This would drive me batty, so I do apologize. I seem to have very few bookmarks and thought this could be the reason! But I can't change my ways! If I see a comma out of place I....MUST....FIX....IT!!!

"Perhaps...I am Sherlock," she allowed herself to whisper.  "And I've simply lost my mind."

But then how could I know things that only Molly could know.  Where Grandma Hooper's pearls had been hidden.  What the head of Jim Moriarty's penis felt like in my mouth (aagh!).  Growing up in Essex.  Falling in love with Sherlock Holmes....

Cancer.   If she really were Sherlock, she could delete those memories that caused distress and only keep the lovely.  The day he told her they were getting married.   _(Of course, we're getting married - why would we be at town hall? No, it's not for a case. Do try to keep up, Molly!_ ) The moment she believed he was truly clean; he had hit rock bottom and there was no further left to fall, and the look in his eyes meant they both knew it was true.  The day she met him, and every lovely day thereafter.

Days became weeks became months became another grandchild placed in her arms.  His arms.  She was just using them, using them to hold the babies, to change the diapers, to cheer on Scottt at football practice, to chop veggies for Sunday supper, which she had to muck up to make it seem like she was a terrible cook.

Things she could not do proved she could not possibly actually be him.  Volunteer his deduction skills when children had gone missing.  Teach the grandbabies the violin.

***

Of late she had begun to entertain even more mysteries.  Perhaps, if he had done the impossible, maybe more impossibilities were available.  Maybe he was still extant, but just not incorporated.  Maybe souls were real...and since he did not believe in heaven, he would have nowhere to go!  Maybe, maybe he would not even want to go to heaven!

_Well, of course not!  That place is full of Ordinary People.  What would I do there?_

Her heart skipped a beat.  Well, his heart.  The very large, very good heart she now used to stay alive.  

"Sherlock?"

No answer.

"Sherlock, are you there?"

No answer.

She knew one of the grandkids might be listening.  She didn't care.  They thought she was senile anyway.  Give 'em a good show.

"Sherlock?  Sherlock?"

Her voice echoed in the not quite empty house.   _His voice._   Her words, his voice.  Masculine, deep, desperate.  

***

Whispers in the kitchen when they thought she was out of range.

"He's so much more like Mom now."

"Yeah...even the way he moves, the way he carries himself."

He had slowly been losing his hearing before her death.  His death.   _Their death?_   So she could pretend to not be able to hear the children, thereby eavesdropping.

But wait....she could hear them. so...he had only been pretending to lose his hearing!!

_Well, yes - I had to have some way of escaping the insipid conversations and, Sweet Lord - debates about Simply Come Dancing!_

"What was that?  Who was that?"

"Dad!  Dad!"  Harry put his hand on his father's arm, but couldn't shake the man who used to be the World's Greatest Consulting Detective out of his reverie.

**

Slowly, the voice became insisent, louder somehow, even though it was all in her head.

Scott, now a teenager, had borrowed the old Belstaff and Molly could not persuade him to give it back by buying him a new one.

"But I like this one, Gramps! It smells like you!"  

She wiped a tear from one blue-green eye.  That was why she cherished the ratty old coat so much.  She would not let anyone dry clean it.  She had spot cleaned it all these years.

_Oh, just tell him as long as he keeps an "A" average, he can keep it._

"What!?!?"

"I said, 'You let them call you  _Gramps_?'"  Mycroft sniffed behind his newspaper and swirled the almost satisfactory cognac in his glass.

"What's wrong with that?" Molly asked, brought back to the present moment, the room, with her "brother" seated in his special chair by the fire, Scott impatiently holding out the Belstaff, waiting for permission.

"What's wrong with Gramps?" Molly repeated.  "I suppose you'd have them call me "sir?"

Mycroft merely rolled his eyes.  "It wouldn't go amiss...."

"Well.  Okay.  I'll think about it."

Mycroft lowered his newspaper with a start and stared at "Sherlock" through suspicious eyes, still as sharp as ever.  

"Think about...what?  Loaning the boy your Belstaff?  Letting him keep it, or..."

"No - that's decided.  He can keep it."

Scott jumped a full foot off the ground, and, thrusting his arms into the much too large coat, ran out of the door.

"No, I mean, I'll think about making them call me "Sir."

Mycroft's eyes pinned Molly down like a moth specimen on paper, and then, trying to startle her, he blurted out, "Will?"

Why is he calling me "Will?"

Molly stared into oblivion.

 _Answer him._   _Senility he might believe, but compliance?  Never._

Molly's mouth hung open.  She looked at Mycroft guiltily, about to, perhaps confess?

"My..My...croft..." she ventured.

_No, darling, that would be a mistake.  He will either have you committed, or have you sent up for interrogation and dissection.  Both, probably.  And his brand of interrogation would most definitely not pass muster at the U.N. High Court of Human Rights...._

_And now you really must answer him!!  Just say, "Don't call me that,_ Mike _."_

Molly cleared her throat.

"Don't call me that."  She felt an internal nudge.  "Don't call me that, MIKE!"

Mycroft visibly relaxed (as far as his duties at the U.N. would ever allow).  He pulled his paper back up over his face.

"Fine," the elder Holmes mumbled.  "Don't have to get vicious about it....."

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry - this gets a bit dark - just a bit. A real descent into the mouth of madness - almost.

"Sherlock Holmes.  I'm giving violin lessons to Sherlock Holmes."  

The young violin teacher just _knew_ no one would believe her.  It was like saying you were giving lessons to Kofi Annan, or Stephen Hawking.   _And me, just out of the Academy.  I wonder how he found me._

Vera's musings were interrupted by a knock on the door which was surprisingly tentative.  The tall, elegant minor celebrity entered her studio hesitantly.  He set the violin case down on the floor, but upside down.  This was the first of many un-musician-like gestures that would confuse Vera over the course of their tutelage.

After a bit of chit chat, Vera went to the small kitchenette to make some tea and to allow Mr. Holmes the opportunity to unpack.

When she re-entered with a tray, she noticed the detective had dropped his bow.

"Um..."  Vera set the tray down on her makeshift concrete block coffee table.  "I guess I'm just confused.  Why are you taking lessons?  I mean...you already know how to play the violin."

"I'm a bit rusty.  After my...wife...passed..."

The elderly gentleman's eyes glazed over.  Vera waited politely, then prompted him.  "After your wife passed...?"

He started, and then smiled.  "I was just thinking about how how he would play.  I mean, I would play.  But then...she left.  And I stopped playing.  For a long while.  It was as if she took all the music with...her."

"Oh, yes, so sorry about that.  I can completely understand.  But I'm sure she would want you to to keep doing something you so clearly loved."

The violin instructor flipped open the page of the Klengel Etudes book.  "I think this is a good place to start.  If you want to start playing in a community orchestras, you'll need to audition."

"Well, really I just want to be able to play at weddings and such.  It's sort of expected now."

Molly stared at the jumble of black ants on the page before her.  She gulped and gingerly picked up the bow off the music stand.  She tried to create the bow hold she had studied on youtube and set the bow hair on the string.  She played the first few notes, hesitantly.  The black tape she had placed on first and third positions were somewhat of a help, but she could only manage to locate a few of the notes.  She didn't make it past the first two measures before the instructor ruffled through her worn leather tote bag.

"Let's do some Wolfhardt etudes."

"I think I need Suzuki Book One."

Vera froze.  "Uh...that's for beginners."

Molly was silent.  "I have something to confess."  

Her head began to throb.

"I think I may have had a stroke or something. Undiagnosed.  I can't remember how to play the violin."

***

Molly kept up with the secret lessons for several months.  It was just beginning to be impossible to fend off the requests to play at weddings, at funerals; to teach local underprivileged children how to play; to teach her own grandchildren.  

She complained of arthritis.  But John would just roll his eyes.  "If you don't want to play at my son's wedding fine.  Just say so.  I just thought since you played at mine...Mary would have wanted it."

That was when she determined to take some lessons.  "I'll try, John.  I'll really try."

John looked at his oldest friend with deep concern.  "What?  What do you mean?  Should I be worried about you?"

"Why?"

"You.  Nice.  Polite.   _'Trying.'_ Something not quite right in the universe."

***

Molly finally relented to the pressure to teach her youngest grandson how to play the violin.  She arranged for the boy to come to the house one day a week, Thursdays at 5 pm.  She could spend the whole day practicing, the whole week, really, in between his lessons, to try to stay one lesson ahead of him.

One day as she finished demonstrating how to shift into third position, Greg folded his arms across his chest in a huff.

"Grandpa, you stink!"

"Yes, I do."

"But everyone says that you're really good!  Why are you pretending to stink?"

"I'm not pretending.  And is stink the most polite thing you can say?"

 _"He's right.  You stink."_ The words are acupuncture needles in her brain, burrowing in, penetrating....

"Come here, honey. "  Her grandson walked closer and stood right next to her.

Molly placed her hand, Sherlock's large hand marbled with blue veins on the little boys' curly mop of chocolate brown hair.  She leaned down to his level and whispered in his ear.  "Can I tell you a secret?"

 _"No, no, no, no, no!_    Sherlock's voice interrupted so loudly that his protest gave her a massive headache, like a spike of hot metal in her eye.  The violin - Sherlock's violin - slipped out of her hands and clattered to the floor. 

"Grandpa!  Your violin!"

 _"Oh, Lord, Molly!"_ His voiced boomed in her head. _"_ _That violin is at least 125 years old! Well, pick it up then!"_

"Grandpa!"

Gregory's grandfather did not answer, but merely sank to the floor, rubbed his forehead hard, clenched his eyes shut.

"Mommy!  Mommy! Something's wrong with Grandpa!"

The little boy ran out of the room.

***

Molly could hear the doctor speaking with her children through the bedroom door.

"Did he have a stroke?"

"No." 

"...acting strangely...well, for years now, but it's begun to..."

"..Strong dose of meds.  Just until he calms down."

"What kind of meds?"

 _Anti-hallucinogens_ , Molly whispered to herself.   She picked up the pill bottle.

_"No.  No, no, no!  No drugs, Molly!"_

She lined up the hard-to-see white plastic arrows and popped the cap.

_"How they ever got away with calling those child safety caps I'll never know.  I was able to open all the bottles in my parents' medicine cabinet by the time I was 18 months."_

She poured a handful out into her palm.

_"Hey.  Stop that."_

"Don't worry, I'm just gonna take one."

 _"No.  You're gonna take just none."_  

And somehow the cap was back on the bottle, and the bottle back in the drawer.

 ***

The doctor's office was carefully appointed in neutral browns and beiges.  After taking it all in with her eyes, Molly found the doctor seated in front of her, staring at her.  

After a moment of awkward silence, she blurted out, "I'm hearing things."

"Hearing things," the doctor parroted.

"I'm hearing my deceased husband's voice.  In my head.  I'm not crazy.  I don't hear it in the room.  It's literally in my head."

"You said ' _husband_.'"

"Yes.  But I'm not crazy."

"Did you guys have some sort of...gender neutral agreement?"

"What?"

"Why are you calling your - Molly Hooper Holmes - your _husband_."

"Because, and this is the thing - this is why you are going to think I'm crazy - but I'm not.  I'm Molly.  Me.  Oh, please believe me!  Don't look at me like that.  I'm not insane, I'm not.  Many times I've thought I was, and I even thought I was him - Sherlock.  But it's me.  I swear to you.  We've swapped. It's not the first time.  It's because he loved me, you see, and I had cancer.

"Yes.  Your wife had cancer.  I read about it.  I am very sorry for your loss.

"That was years ago...no, I'm talking about now.  He's inside of me.  And I can prove it.  You see, I know what the stars are.  They're not just points of light, you see.  And they matter - Sherlock didn't think they matter.  I know that Pluto is not a planet, but a trans-neptunian object.  Sherlock would never deign to know that.  He would delete that immediately.  So you see, I can't be Sherlock."

The doctor discreetly wrote something down on her notepad.

The handsome elderly man ran his hands through his thick silver hair and almost yelled, "I am not Sherlock Holmes!"

The doctor stared at Mr. Holmes with concern and frowned.  "Let's meet again next week.  What is a good day for you?"

***

When she got home from the doctor, she walked quietly into the foyer, carefully removed Belstaff Number Two, and hung it up.  She walked up the stairs on the long, muscled legs of a race horse - Sherlock's legs, still strong after all these years, if a bit achy.  The knees.  She would have to tell him to take care of his knees better.  He was forever neglecting his own self-care, trying to save the world.

_"Well, Molly.  I guess the jig is up."_

"What do you mean?"

_"They'll commit us for sure.  Or more drugs.  Best if Mycroft stays out of it.  Yes, this is possibly a better outcome.  With drugs they might leave us alone."_

Molly swayed in place.  Something dawned on her.  She wasn't crazy.  This was really Sherlock.  She would know; she would know right now.  She ran up the remainder of the steps and bolted into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door behind her.

"Say you're sorry!"  She stared hard into the mirror.  Into her own eyes.   _His_ own eyes.  She could swear she could see him there, ghosting behind those green-grey marbles.

"Say you're sorry!"

" _I'm sorry you stink at playing the violin._ "

"You.  Are.  Not.  Funny!  This is not funny, Sherlock!"

" _Well..._ "

"No. It's not.  It's not!"

***

When Joanna found her father in the bathroom, he was striking himself in the face.  She immediately grabbed at his arms to stop him hitting himself.

"Dad, Dad!  Who are you talking to?  Say _'I'm sorry?'_   Why?  What did I do?  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just stop hitting yourself, oh, God.....Daddy..."

Joanna sank down to the floor where her father was kneeling.  She wrapped her arms around him to restrain him, and then rocked the World's Greatest Consulting Detective in her arms like a baby until the sun went down.

"Thank you, Joanna.  Thank you.  I'm having somewhat of a disagreement with your father."

"Okay, Dad.  Whatever you say."  Joanna made a mental note to have all of her father's belongings moved to her home.

 


	6. A Christmas Miracle

Months passed.  Mr. Holmes was moved into his daughter's house, and life continued as it ever does.

The house had settled down for the night, so Molly curled up on the bed and tried to practice mindfulness, to empty her mind.

To silence her mind.

His mind.

_Our mind._

And she fell asleep, somehow not quite inhabiting Sherlock's body, more like...floating above it, and she could feel him beneath her, pulling her down onto him, encouraging her to ride him, their bodies slapping together obscenely, like that first time on the kitchen floor.  She could swear she felt his fingers digging into her buttocks, and she felt the shudder go through him.  

 _Don't let me wake up,_ she whispered, as he emptied himself into her.

In the morning, unseasonably warm air seeped in through the cracked window.  She could hear Joanna working on the winter garden.  Penelope and her dog were cavorting around the hives, and the faint sounds of Greg practicing his violin wafted down the hallway.

_He really needs lessons.  His rhythm is barely competent and his tone production is that of hyena being skinned alive. I guess I will have to step up to the plate._

Molly sat up.

"That's our grandson!"

_I'm not insulting him.  I'm just describing him._

"Sherlock. It really is you?"

_Please don't waste precious neurotransmitter on stating the obvious._

"I'm not insane?  You are not....dead?"

_Surely you did not think I would die for you!  I love you, but not THAT much!  I rather like living, Molly, and keep intending to do so.  WIth your permission of course.  If you don't mind.  Sweetheart._

"But Sherlock....what have you done!!  You could have simply...gone on living!"

_But then you would have been in the ground, Molly.  And how could we cuddle at night, or watch our grandchildren grow, or argue over respiration rates of meal worms, or...?_

"I suppose that's all true Sherlock...."

_You interrupted me._

"....It would be awfully hard to cuddle if I were decomposing in the ground."

_Yes.  A most unsavory image. Rather too Emily Bronte for my tastes. An entirely unacceptable turn of events.   And now I'd like to go for a walk._

She slipped the New Belstaff. 

_And the scarf, Molly dear.  It's quite cold today, and you need to start taking better care of me.  Of us.  I don't care about my physical well being, since I don't have a physical...well, anything.  But you...you've been slipping.  Skipping vitamins.  Staying shut up all day._

"I still feel a bit..."

_Guilty?  About supplanting me and living on while I became incorporeal?  Don't my darling.  Remember, I always said I'd make it up to you._

"You mean...Miranda's birth?"

_That was wrong of me.  I understand that now. After so selfishly depriving you - a youngish woman - of the opportunity to feel her first human child extruded through the vaginal canal, the least I could do was not let you die. And the loving you and that bit._

"You did do it on purpose!  I knew it!"

Molly walked out into the garden, down the brick path, into a secluded area where she liked to hide herself away, to read, to think.

"And the first time?"

_Hm?_

"The first time you swapped with me.  The Halloween party?  Did you do it on purpose?"

_Oh, no!  That was an accident, like tripping or something._

Joanna looked up from her gardening and saw her father talking to himself, chuckling.

"Tripping? Did you say, tripping?"

Molly and Sherlock walked past the beehives, past the grave markers of many family pets - the regal statue of Toby guarding over all.

"Um...how did you manage this?  This is quite...beyond the realm of...anything even remotely...possible in this astral plane...."

_I'd like to introduce you to a concept that we've never discussed before._

"We've discussed most everything, Sherlock!"

_Not this, my love._

Molly gasped as she felt the brush of a hand on her cheek.

 _Sit down._ _Close your eyes._

"Our eyes?"

_Yes.  Our eyes. And how I cherish you for taking such good care of them all these years, the doctor appointments and all those unmentionables._

"Unmentionable what?"

_Comestibles.  The spiky ones...orange, I think..._

"You mean, carrots!  You don't know the word for carrots?  Why, because you never had a case involving...carrots!?!?!"

_Forget about that.  Come with me, deep inside._

Molly gasped.  She could feel Sherlock, his hands on her hands - her own small, soft hands - leading her down into her own mind, deeper than she had ever been.  She pulled back, just a little  She wanted to trust him.  But still...

_Deeper. No, deeper, my love. Come with me all the way. Past my heart, past my soul. Follow me._

She felt him pulling, guiding her...where, she did not know.

_You know I would not hurt you, or let you come to harm.  You will need to be very calm, very calm indeed.  There, that's it.  Your heart rate has dropped nicely.  There's something so important that I want to show you.  It has been a part of you so very long, since you had memories.  So many lovely things are stored there._

He led her into the most lovely place, crystal, and sunny, doorknobs encrusted with gemstones, and inside, in rooms large and small, some of Sherlock's memories, and her own, dwelling side by side, a bit crowded, maybe.  But still.  So cozy.  There was Toby....and the baby she lost after Miranda....and she had never told anyone about that, not even Sherlock...her mother...a locked room with what sounded like a madman on the other side of the door, scratching, banging.  

"Oh, no, is that...?"

_Don't worry.  He is safe and well-cared for in there.  That's down to you of course.  I would have thrown away the key...._

Toby had left his perch to follow them and was now lacing himself in between their legs, caressing their calves with his tail.  He hissed as they passed a very loathsome hound.  Sherlock reached down and patted the creature's massive head.

_What is this place, Sherlock?_

_It's where I've been hiding.  I've been here this whole time.  While you mourned me.  While you held Joanna's hand during her difficult delivery, remember?  I've been here, watching it all, thanks to you.  This lovely place, inside this lovely you.  It was ugly, and scary, and then I put everything you are into each room, and you made it lovely._

_It was all mine, and mine alone, and in it, I was the king, but a lonely one.  I abdicated my throne, to make you Queen of this place.  And you anointed every corner with your beauty._

_It's called a Mind Palace._


End file.
